Becoming Mary Poppins
by Darling Pretty
Summary: "Mary Poppins was four years old when she first encountered Death." Mary Poppins and Death are inextricably linked. But then again, so is Life. Two-part story.
1. Chapter 1

**So here's a new thing. I'm so sorry that I don't write often. I don't have the kind of writing time I would like! But I hope you enjoy this.**

**Mary Poppins and all associated characters are the property of Disney and P.L. Travers, not me.**

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Mary Poppins was four years old when she first encountered Death.

Her grandmother, a faded beauty from long ago, was visiting from her home outside of London when, while holding the young Mary in her lap, she suffered what was determined to be a coronary and passed. Self-possessed beyond her years, Mary Poppins climbed off her grandmother's lap and went to inform her mother that she no longer had a mother. She put it more delicately than that. At the funeral, there were many men in dark black suits, but there was one with slicked back hair who caught her eye and nodded. Young Mary raised her hand and waved. Her hand was quickly slapped down by her father; it was indecorous at the graveside. The man did not wave back.

Death knocked again only two years later, but this time it came even closer to home. Mary was a mere six years old when she stepped out into the street and was nearly run down by a lorry careening through the street. She was knocked to the ground and out of the way by a well meaning bystander who found the bones of his leg irreparably shattered. There was a man in a suit who tipped his hat at her and walked away. She frowned and the adults around her set about getting her savior to the hospital. When it was ascertained that Mary was not injured, she was quickly forgotten and taken home to be fussed over and scolded for such carelessness. No one mentioned the man dressed in black.

She forgot about the man in the suit but not the man in the street as she aged. When she was eleven years old and perfectly capable of making her own decisions, thank you very much, she wrote every year to update him on herself; she wouldn't want him to think of her as a waste of a perfectly good leg. He never said he thought of her that way and she desperately wanted to believe that it was true.

Mary Poppins grew as time marched forward and she blossomed into a beautiful young woman of seventeen. She had long since forgotten the man in the suit and she was a glowing example of what a privileged young lady should be. After flirting with a few suitors, she was engaged to be married on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. The wedding would be in six months time, enough time for her mother to throw an elaborate society affair that would be the talk of London for the rest of the year.

Unfortunately, the wedding was not to be. Perhaps it was fortunate, because Mary Poppins had realized in the months leading to her wedding that she was not ready to surrender her name, to become a wife. There was still so many thing she wanted to do and she wasn't ready to surrender herself to a life of making and raising children until she could take over the social chair for a charitable organization. Perhaps she was unfair in her characterization of married life; many of her friends married and seemed to glow with happiness, but something deep inside of Mary Poppins told her to wait. There was more to come.

There was and there wasn't. At eighteen and a half, three weeks before her wedding, Mary Poppins found herself without a wedding and without a groom, though not in the way she would have expected. At eighteen and a half, Mary Poppins found herself in mourning as her fiancé was interred, carried off by the disease in the water that carried thousands to the same inauspicious end. Mary Poppins was, of course, saddened by the senseless of life but she had her freedom and perhaps she wasn't as sad as a mourning fiancée should be. That fact would cause her considerable guilt in the future, but she couldn't help but be slightly relieved to be unburdened.

At the funeral, there were many men dressed in black coats; her wedding was to be in fall, but the weather assured that her fiancé's funeral seemed to take place in the dead of winter. The funeral was rushed; the ground would be cold and difficult soon. It was better he be laid to rest sooner rather than later. The mourners gathered, huddled together against the bone-chilling wind. Mary would go home later and find her lips terribly chapped. In the haze of numbing uncertainty and grief, she merely nodded to a tall man in a ill-fitting suit who pressed a handkerchief into her hand. It wasn't until he was out of sight that she was struck by a chord of familiarity; she has seen his face before. But he was gone and no one else could give her any details of the man. He was everywhere; she must know him, but she couldn't place his face.

Mourning was an awkward time; no one was quite sure exactly what was dictated by the death of a fiancé; she would not mourn with his real family, though everyone agreed she should observe. Mary found herself skirting the edges of mourning. She did appreciate that, as a woman in mourning, she was allowed hours unattended and undisturbed without question. In her silent room, she read and became further entrenched in the idea that she would not marry, though she was still unsure of what form her life would take.

By twenty-four, she was unmarried and considered a spinster. It was at twenty-four that Mary Poppins' life would change more drastically than it ever had. At age twenty-four and seven months, Mary Poppins found herself sick for one of the first times in her life. She'd always been a fairly healthy girl; the only time she could remember being laid out in bed was for a day when she'd caught a chill and that was mostly because her nanny was a bit of a hypochondriac.

So when Mary Poppins found herself unable to pull herself out of bed one morning, she worried. Everyone worried. Her mother called in doctors, specialists, but Mary Poppins found herself growing weaker. It didn't matter how many doctors her parents called; by the third day, Mary couldn't have distinguished one from the other. She was lost to herself and their faces, if she was even aware of them, were completely out of focus. She felt she was drowning and losing the fight for oxygen.

There came a point where it seemed too difficult to continue; Mary Poppins was a fighter but this was beyond any challenge. Her body was giving out on her and it was becoming harder to convince herself to keep going.

It was midnight when she opened her eyes and there was the man in the black suit standing in the corner of the world. Her eyes were clearer than they had been in a week. His nose was sharp and his eyes dark and flashing. Mary stared at him and waited for him to speak; he was quite handsome but watched her just as intently. She thought about reaching for the bell on her nightstand, rousing and summoning a waiting servant— after all, there was a strange man in her bedroom. That should require attention. She waited though. She wanted to know what he had to say.

The air was oppressive in her room. A roaring fire was kept in her fireplace—an attempt to sweat out the fever that was so close to sweeping her away. Her throat was dry and her voice would crack from a lack of use. She took a long drink of water and the man watched her.

"I suppose you're here for me," she eventually said. Her assumption was correct and her voice cracked.

The man said nothing and continued to stare intently at her. His eyes glittered in the firelight.

"I'm to die then?" she asked. She was simply voicing the theory that had been slowly forming in her mind over the years.

He said nothing and his face did not move. Mary nodded. She didn't feel afraid. But she did feel tired. The little energy she had was quickly leaving her body and she fell back against the pillows. She hoped her mother wouldn't cry too much.

Her eyelids were lead and quickly closed. But before she fell asleep, she sensed another person in the room, a woman. Her hair was red and Mary thought she wasn't wearing shoes. Though there was not a word said, the two seemed to be having a conversation. Mary couldn't focus; she fell into a deep sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Sorry this took so long! Everything got crazy and I'm apparently Agent Carter trash now.

**Disclaimer: **All discernible characters are property of P.L. Travers and the Disney Company.

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Mary Poppins awoke the next morning and the world, which had seemed murky and unsure the day before, now seemed clear. The sun was shining. Mary could hear birds chirping, which was already a change from the previous week. She opened her eyes and her vision wasn't blurry. Looking around, there was not a sign of the man in black nor the barefoot woman, but she was well enough to sit up and swing her own bare feet onto the floor and stand. She nearly collapsed from an overwhelming dizziness, but as she had not stood in weeks that was to be expected.

When the room stopped spinning, she let go of the wall and took her first steps. They became easier the longer she was up and she noticed that she felt none of the weakness that had marked the past few weeks, that rightly should mark the recovery from such a devastating illness. But it wasn't there and Mary felt more like herself than ever.

She crossed to the window and looked out as she pulled a silk dressing gown around herself. The sunlight was warm on her face and she threw open the window, bidding the musty stench of confined illness to leave the room. A lark landed on the sill and Mary held her breath, not wanting to scare the thing. The bird hopped closer, closer than she had ever seen a bird get to a person without food. Mary's hand rested on the sill and, much to her surprise, the bird tilted its head and perched on her pointer finger. It sat contentedly while she gently raised her arm to extend outward. In fact, it showed no signs of being incline to move at all.

On a whim, she pursed her lips and whistled softly; she had always been a decent whistler, something that had never been encouraged but was a fun skill to show at parties. The lark chirped back, nothing like the tune Mary had whistled, but it seemed to almost be replying. Of course, that was impossible.

She was so enraptured by the bird, she was taken entirely by surprise when the room was filled with a near shout. "Mary Poppins! Come away from that window this instant!"

The lark flew and Mary whirled around just in time to be pulled into her mother's arms. "What on earth were you thinking, Mary? Come, get back in bed."

She just laughed and looked at her mother. "I'm fine!" she promised, trying to make eye contact with the woman. "I promise."

Mary's mother stopped. Her daughter showed no signs of the illness that had nearly carried her away. Her eyes weren't glassy, her face no longer pale. The roses in her cheeks, which had enchanted so many young men, were back and she was standing tall. With a gasp, Mary's mother pressed a hand to her forehead; the fever was gone. She was the picture of health.

Doctors were called and left in confusion by Mary's complete turn around. The house celebrated that night, though everyone watched Mary Poppins carefully, wondering if the miraculous recovery was only a temporary respite, that Mary was destined to collapse over the lamb shank the cook had prepared. But she wasn't; Mary stayed strong and happy through out the evening.

The servants whispered in the hall. What had been done for the girl? For the past week, Mary Poppins had hovered on the edge of life and death and even her parents had resigned themselves to the fact that she was going to tip over into endless sleep. The doctors had expected her to leave the earthly realm within the week and by the time the lights were extinguished the night before, all had assumed it would be that night. And now, here was that same body appearing healthier and more youthful than she had since the passing of the young man who was to be her husband. By any account, it made no sense. Some of the more superstitious of the staff whispered of dangerous deals with things beyond the world, of late night visitors behind closed doors and terrible prices exacted, but the more sensible quickly shut their mouths with sharp words. There was nothing new or different about Mary Poppins, only that she was even stronger than they had originally known.

The days passed quickly and Mary seemed to gain more strength every day. Within a month, she was back in society and life returned to normal. Her father returned to work, her mother to her charitable causes, and Mary Poppins found that where she had once felt most at home with a novel, she now wanted to explore the world she had so nearly left. Of course, with her miracle curing had come a new scrutiny; her parents were too scared to let her out of some sort of supervision and she was never without some member of the staff checking on her every move. Mary took to long, rambling walks but that couldn't satisfy her new cravings for the world.

With time, Mary became more and more adept at slipping away unnoticed. Then she _would _travel the city, not just the parts she had seen her entire life. She found hidden alleyways where undoubtedly shady dealings happened, she found different parks than what she knew, and she found the parts of town where the buildings were stacked on each other. It was claustrophobic there; the smell of the industrial smoke carried through the air. It was a kick in the stomach. Life near the river was different. Even the children worked there; there was no leisure time. It was as though Mary had stepped into a mirror world.

It filled her with a desire to help; she had never been so filled with such zeal. Every day she began looking for opportunities to help someone— a tuppence to woman on the steps of the cathedral, a back of cast-away clothing delivered to a doorstep— but it wasn't enough. She knew she needed to do more. It was difficult, knowing she was meant to do something and feeling entirely powerless to do it. She'd never been quite so frustrated.

Months slipped away as Mary began to form relationships with some of the women of the area; they'd been slow to accept her help or even her company, but she was finding that the more she ingratiated herself to the children, the more likely the adults were to accept her presence. Fortunately, she was naturally good with children. She found particular warmth in the home of a woman who worked in a laundry, though Mary had no inkling of how she managed; the family was big, at least seven children ranging from Mary's age all the way down to ten years old. And beyond that, the woman herself was too kindhearted for her own pocketbook— she'd taken in two infants left on the steps of her church. Mary Poppins knew she had found someone that was the very definition of a good person.

She spent more time in the woman's home than she did her own. Her own was stifling, she was sure she was being eaten alive by constant worry and fear. She learned to not comment on the chill in the air—her mother was sure to send her to bed with at least seven blankets and a roaring fire. In her heart, Mary Poppins knew that she was complaining of something beyond selfish; her parents loved her too much to lose her. She could hardly be considered unfortunate.

But as the days passed and her mother grew more worrisome, Mary grew more secretive. She didn't enjoy the fact but it was a necessity. For Mary Poppins was holding a secret so beyond anything she'd encountered before.

It started with a glass. Her mother's water glass shattered on the table in the midst of a disagreement with Mary. The servants and her mother assumed she had slammed it down too hard in the heat of the moment; Mary Poppins knew better. She couldn't explain how she knew, just that a piece of her, buried deep within the recesses of her mind, a part of her that had never existed before, that it was her. She had shattered the glass; to be more precise, her emotional reaction had shattered the glass.

Mary Poppins had no knowledge of the occult, no interest in the supernatural. She believed her miraculous recovery from illness to be a result of her own indomitable will and an impressive immune system. So it quite stands to reason that she had no logical claim to the fact that she had managed to shatter a glass without touching it.

In fact, Mary Poppins had done so and as she grew stronger, so did the incidents around her. A lark greeted her every morning, though she assumed this to be a strange, if lovely, coincidence. When she was angry, things broke. When she was sad, clouds tended to block out the sun. But none of this caught her notice. In fact, it wasn't until she was straightening her mood, in an uncommon sunny mood, that anything even struck her as peculiar.

For there, in the middle of the room, hovered the pitcher of water kept on the table by her bed. Mary's eyes grew wide and the pitcher clattered to the ground, shattering. Three separate maids came to check on her and, shaken, Mary very quickly sent them away, claiming clumsiness but that she would clean the mess herself. Somehow, deep within herself, she knew this was something she needed to keep secret.

Late that night, Mary was still awake, running through the strange events of the past few months. Suddenly things made sense, if it could be called that. Still, these events had never happened before her sickness, and Mary was worried.

The clock in the hall chimed midnight and the taper on her table was burned nearly down. Resigning herself to a night of restlessness, Mary reached over and pulled out her diary, aiming to write down anything to make herself feel better.

When she looked up, there was a woman in the corner, a woman who only barely sparked a memory in Mary's mind. Still, it was hard not to remember a woman with copper hair and a lack of shoes.


End file.
